Card-flat



(No Model.)

J. P. FOSS. CARD FLAT.

No. 462,121. Patented 0ct.27,1891.

ing the stripping mechanism.

UNITED STATES PATENT Qrrrcn.

JOHN F. FOSS, OF LOIVELL, MASSACHUSETTS.

CARD-FLAT.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 462,121, dated October27, 1891.

Application filed March 6,1891. Serial No. 383,998. (No model.)

To aZZ whom it may concern:

Be it known that I, JOHN F. FOSS, of Lowell, in the State ofMassachusetts, have invented a new and useful Improvement in Card-Flats,of which the following is a specification.

My invention consists of a card-flat provided with two or more separatebeveled faces or touches. By touch I intend and mean the face formed bythe steel-tempered teeth of the usual card -clothing. The ordinarycard-flat now in use is a one-touch flat and it is about two inches wideon its cylinder side. To narrow this width materially would necessitatea material increase in the number of flats, resulting in an undesirablemultiplicity of troublesome parts and in complicat- If such a fiat wereclothed up to or nearly up to each edge say, for example, to withinthree-sixteenths of an inch of each edgethis would resultin too muchwaste, or, in other words, the face or touch would be of such excessivewidth that it would take off too much good cotton from thecarding-cylinder during the carding process. Consequently in theone-touch flat the clothing stops short a considerable distance of eachedge. This narrowing of the face, while remedying the difficultyreferred to, is, however, productive of another and equally seriousdifficulty, because thereby the space between the teeth of one flat andthose of the neXtis made wider than the length of the staple of ordinarycotton, and the result is that in carding at high speed the staple isapt to and in practicefrequently does become tangled and snarled. Again,to produce the best results in carding the bites of the successive faces01' touches (by bite I intend that longitudinal edge of the beveled faceor touch of the cardflat which is nearest the cylinder) should be onlyabout thirty-five per cent. farther apart than the length of the staplecardedas, for example, for three-fourthsinch staple the bites should befrom one and one-sixteenth to one and one-eighth inches apart.Manifestly this would be unattainable in the ordinary one-touch fiat,unless by narrowing the flat itself, which, for the reasons above given,would be undesirable and, in fact, impracticable. Furthermore, the capacity of the machine is augmented and the quality of work done by it isimproved as the number of beveled touches presented to the cylinder isincreased. For the reasons hereinbefore stated there can be no materialincrease of this character with the ordinary one-touch flat.

It is to remedy the difficulties and to realize the advantages abovereferred to that my invention has been devised, My improved flat has onits cylinder side an acting surface composed of a plurality ofindependent beveled faces or touches. Theseveral touches are separatedfrom each other by an interval (say from t-hree-sixteenths tothree-eighths of an inch) less in width than the length of the commoncotton staple, and the teeth are brought so near thelongitudinal edgesof the flat thatthe space between adjoining faces or touches ofcontiguous flats will be of corresponding width. Thus the staple will bebridged from one touch to the next, whether the touches be on the sameflat or on contiguous flats, and in this way I avoid the tangling orsnarling of the staple above alluded to. Furthermore, in this way I amenabled not only to bring the bites into that proximity with one anotherneeded to obtain the best results in carding, but also to obtain in anefficient and practical way that multiplication or increase in thenumber of the touches which is so desirable. The several independenttouches or faces of each flat can be and preferably are assembled upon asingle sheet of clothing, and the factthat they are thus assembledoffers no serious obstacle to the grinding of the faces, although eachhas its own independent bevel. In Letters Patent No. 428,082, of May20,1890, is illustrated an d described a machine for doing this work.This patented machine, indeed, was devised more particularly forgrinding the flat, which is the subject of my present application.

In the accompanying drawings, Figurel is a plan of a portion of a flatembodying my invention. Fig. 2 is an end elevation of the same, togetherwith a diagrammatic representation of part of a carding-cylinder, forthe purpose of indicating the relation of the flat to the cylinder. Inthese figures the flat hasthree separate independently -beveled faces ortouches. Fig. 3 is an end view of two flats placed side by side, eachhaving two separate faces or touches. Figs. at and 5 are respectively atop view and an end view of a modification, hereinafter moreparticularly referred to.

A is the body of the fiat, of any usual or suitable construction.

B is the leather strip or backing in which the wire teeth are set. 0 arethe faces or touches formed of these teeth, said faces being separatedfrom one another by spaces or intervals at, as hereinbefore indicated,and the several faces of each fiat being in one sheet of clothing. Theteeth adjoining the longitudinal edges of the flat are placed so near tothese edges that when flats are placed together side by side adjoiningfaces or touches of contiguous flats will be separated by an intervalabout the same as that which separates adjoining faces on the same fiat.This is indicated in Fig. 3. The flat shown in the figure last named isa two-touch flat, and its body Ais of the same dimensions as theordinary one-touch flat. The latter can thus be readily fitted out withmy invention by removing the ordinary clothirg with which it is facedand substituting therefor a twotouch clothing, such as shown in thedrawlngs.

Each face or touch, as indicated, has its own independent bevel, and itis desirable in most instances that in each individual flat eachsucceeding face should be slightly nearer the carding-cylinder than theone before it, as shown more particularly in Fig. 2.

A compound flat with a plurality of faces or touches asselnbledinaccordance with my invention might be made by attaching several flatsections of the same general structure as the ordinary flat, but havingthinner and considerably narrower bodies to one and the same back plate.Such a structure is shown in Figs. 4 and 5. The separate flat sections(threein numberin this instance) having coinparatively narrow and thinbodies A are secured in proper relation to one another to the back plateD by suitable means. The means in this instance consist of key-holeslots m in the plate and screw-studs y on the sections. The heads of thestuds overlap the edges of the narrow parts of the slots, and byscrewing down the studs the flat sections will be held in place. Thisconstruction allows each touch to be removed and handled independentlyof the others. I consider it, however, inferior on the whole to theconstruction first above described.

Having described my invention and the manner in which the same is or maybe carried into effect. what I claim as new, and de sire to secure byLetters Patent, is

1. A card-fiat having a plurality of sepa-" rate independently-beveledfaces or touches, substantially as described.

2. A card-fiat having a plurality of separate independent-ly-beveledtouches on one and the same sheet of clothing, substantially asdescribed.

3. A card-flathaving a plurality of separate independently-beveledtouches, the teeth composing the several touches being of such relativelength that each succeeding touch will as a whole project (inthe'direction of the carding-cylinder) slightly beyond the touch beforeit, substantially as described.

4. A card-flat having a plurality of separate independently-beveledtouchesand consisting of flat-sections armed or provided with saidtouches, and a back plate to which the individual sections areindependently and detachably connected, substantially as described.

In testimony whereof I affix my signature in presence of two witnesses.

JOHN F. Foss.

Witnesses:

FRANK A. DALY, HERVEY D. MELENDY.

